Love Of A Penguin
by Sideshow Bob Roberts
Summary: Skipper's acting weird around Marlene...could this mean what she thinks it means?


**Disclaimer: I do not own anything PoM related **_**or**_** Madagascar related. You'll see why I say that...;)**

**Enjoy...

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_**Love Of A Penguin**_

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Marlene leaped out of the water of her otter habitat's pool and did a couple of flips as she flew down into the water again. A few kids who were watching her clapped happily as they watched the Asian otter do tricks.

The speakers of the zoo turned on with a little bit of static in the beginning, and Alice's voice boomed throughout the zoo. "It's now closing time, so...everyone please get the heck out of the zoo." The speakers fell silent for a second. A man's voice could be heard in the background, but only the words 'Yo, Alice' at the beginning were understandable. Alice sighed a little. "Thank you."

They clicked off and all of the people in the zoo headed towards the exit. After the last few people left the zoo, Alice slammed the gates shut and locked them. She looked around and embraced the silence for a second before retreating to her office.

Marlene swam under the water once she saw that Alice wasn't around anymore and made her way to the penguins' habitat. She surfaced and stepped up onto the platform that was above their HQ. "Well, looks like they're up to...whatever they do." Marlene dove into the water again and swam to the door that was located there. Once she entered the tiny little room and closed the door, the water was taken out of the room via a drain in the floor so that when she entered the HQ, none of the water would pour out into it.

She opened the door to the HQ and waved a little to the penguins. "Hey guys, what's going on?"

Each of the penguins were hard at work with each of their own individual duties: Kowalski was hard at work, writing at a chalkboard which had various equations written down on. Rico was sharpening an ax in a corner of the room, while laughing viciously. Over at the television that the penguins had in the HQ, Private was watching some cartoon that seemed to make him laugh every five seconds.

As for Skipper, he was sitting at a desk looking at something. He looked up upon hearing the door open and pushed the paper away. "Marlene, what are you doing here?"

"Just dropping by for a..." She couldn't help but be distracted...and scared a little, because of Rico, who still was sharpening that ax at the time. "A visit. So what's up?"

"Nothing, nothing at all, Marlene." Skipper brushed past her quickly and stood behind the door that she left open. "You didn't see _anything._" The door slammed shut and the sound of water pouring into the little room was heard as Skipper went out to the surface.

Marlene, confused for a second due to Skipper's hasty exit, stood there in silence for a moment. "Well, that was weirder than usual. What's with him today, guys?" She looked to Kowalski, who just turned back to the board without answering her. "Okay..." Marlene didn't even approach Rico, as he still had the ax in his hand. She walked over to Private and plopped down onto the ground next to him. "So...why is Skipper's tail in such a knot today, Private?"

"Sorry Marlene, can't tell you." Private's eyes were practically glued to the television set while he talked to Marlene. In the corner of the screen, the time began to flash and Private hopped up. "Sorry, gotta do some recon. See ya, Marlene."

"Oh, okay...that's..." She looked at the screen for a second, then to Private who was already on his way up the ladder. "You have fun with that!" She turned back to the TV and watched it for a second. "I've got to find out what's going on with Skipper..."

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Later, Private had climbed all the way up to the top of the clock tower at the zoo with a pair of binoculars to do his recon work. But that time, he brought no peanut butter winkies. He learned his lesson from last time. Private paced back and forth a little in-between views of the zoo.

With a bit of struggling, Marlene managed to climb to the top of the tower as well and, after a second or two of hesitating because of the height, she stood up and walked over to Private. "Hey there, Private. What--what are you doing?" She took a quick glance over the edge of the platform and backed up a little. "All the way up here..."

"Recon, Marlene." Private held the binoculars up to his eyes and looked out over the park for anyone or anything coming.

"Oh, cool...cool." Marlene looked around during the awkward silence that followed. Private obviously didn't want to talk during his duties, but she was determined to get him to get him to tell her what's going on. She took a breath and stepped closer to him. "Okay, Private, I gotta ask, what's up with Skipper today?"

Private lowered the binoculars and started to walk to the opposite side of the tower. "Can't tell you, Marlene. Skipper wouldn't like that."

"Ah, okay. That's...that's fine. But I bet you would tell me for," Marlene quickly pulled Private's favorite snack out from behind her back and crinkled the wrapper of it a little. "A peanut butter winkie, eh?"

"A winkie?" Private spun around and nearly drooled at the sight of the sugary snack. "I don't know..."

The wrapper quickly fell to the ground as Marlene took it out of it's package. "Come on, Private, you know you want a tasty treat. And you'll get it...if you tell me why Skipper's so jumpy."

"Well..." Private's eyes bounced around quickly as he thought about what was the right thing to do. That, however, quickly came to an end. He dashed over to Marlene and grabbed the peanut butter treat out of her hands. "Skipper's doing something special tonight and he doesn't want anyone to know about it except us, which is why he's got me on recon right now because he doesn't want to be caught." Private tossed the snack into the air and when it came down he caught it in his mouth and started chewing it. "Mm...winkie."

"Something special...give me those." Marlene snagged the binoculars from the rather content Private. She walked over to the ledge of the tower and used to binoculars to look out into the zoo. "So...if I was Skipper and doing something mysterious...where would I be..." She quickly scanned the zoo and eventually saw Skipper walk out of the Zoovenir shop with a grass skirt and what looked like a flower hidden under it in his flippers. "Hm...that's...odd."

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Marlene walked down the path of the zoo, arms crossed and thinking as she does. She passed various animals' exhibits as she made her way to her home. "A grass skirt..."what could Skipper possibly be doing with a grass skirt that could be a special night?

"Who's got a grass skirt?" A female voice asked from the simian exhibit.

This caught Marlene off-guard slightly, as she's used to hearing male voices coming from there. She turned to see who it was that spoke to her and was pleased to see a familiar face in the tree. "Oh, Lulu, it's you! What are you doing back here?"

"I wanted to see Phil again, so the penguins did me a favor and sent over a nasty group of ticks to the simian exhibit at my zoo." Lulu hopped down off of the tree and landed next to Marlene. "Lovely bunch. So, what's all this about a grass skirt, then?"

"Oh, well," Marlene leaned up against the fence of the simian exhibit. "Private told me that Skipper was going to do something, something special tonight and then I saw Skipper with a grass skirt and I think a flower, but I'm not sure. And this morning he totally avoided me."

Lulu nodded slightly and smiled at Marlene, having figured it all out. "It appears that a certain penguin has a crush on a certain otter. "

Marlene laughed a little in disbelief and looked away for a second. She never thought for a second that Skipper would ever have an interest in anyone, let alone her. "What...what do you mean?"

"Oh, come on, it's obvious." Lulu went to the fence and leaned up against it next to Marlene. "Skipper avoided you this morning, right? And apparently he's doing something special, and it's obviously for someone if you saw a flower. Put it all together, and what do you get?"

"Skipper..." She started to push herself off of the fence. Marlene looked a little shocked and surprised by that revelation. "Is gonna ask me out?"

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About an hour or so later, inside of the the otter habitat, Marlene was reaching the peak of nervousness. She was pacing back and forth across the room and rubbing the back of her head a little. Her fur looked a little neater than usual and she appeared to have dolled herself up a bit for the evening. _"This is so--so unexpected...why me? Well,.yeah,I know __why__ me, I'm pretty much the only female here, but...why me?"_ She abruptly stopped when she heard the clock tower's bells start to ring. She let out a breath and started to head for the exit. _"Better not keep him waiting, I guess."_

Because she didn't want to ruin her appearance, Marlene decided to take the long way around and walk to the HQ to meet up with Skipper. As she lept over the water and made it onto the platform, she noticed Private standing there. "Private, hi." She stepped up to the bowl which hid the hatch to the HQ, but he stepped in front of her. "What are you doing?"

"Stopping you from interrupting Skipper's night, Marlene." He quickly lost focus about his duties as Marlene stepped closer, noticing that she had made herself look a little more attractive. "You look good tonight, Marlene. Going somewhere?"

She almost wanted to say thanks to him, but because she was late as she was, she focused on the matter at hand then instead."Yeah, to be with Skipper...I thought."

Private moved the bowl and started stepping aside for her to go into the HQ. "Sorry, Marlene. Didn't know he told you about his date. Do be quiet, though."

"Quiet...why would I?..." She slowly made her way into the secret hideout of the penguins and was greeted immediately with some Hawaiian music and the smell of fish-scented candles. After making it to the final rung and making it to the bottom, she turned around and was rather surprised by the sight. Kowalski was standing near the ladder, watching Skipper. "What's going on here?" She whispered as softly as she could to the genius penguin, but could barely contain herself because of what she saw was going on in front of her.

"Marlene?" Kowalski said in a slightly shocked tone. He didn't expect to see her there in the middle of all this. "I had no idea you were part of Skipper's date." He quickly pulled out his notepad, which had the itinerary for the evening on it, and looked through the pages for anything about Marlene.

"Well, I _thought_ I was..." She said, quickly realizing how wrong she was about the evening. "But apparently not."

In the middle of the room was a small table with a Hawaiian looking cloth covering it. At one end was Skipper, wearing the grass skirt that Marlene saw him with previously in the day. At the other end of the table was his doll wife, Lola, sitting in a chair.

"I got this for you, dollface." Skipper pulled out the flower that he had taken from the Zoovenir shop and handed it to Lola. It eventually just fell to the ground because, as a doll, she was incapable of grabbing it.

Marlene raised an eyebrow at the strange sight of Skipper being on a date with a doll. She stuttered a little bit and leaned closer to Kowalski. "He's on a date with _a doll?_!"

"Affirmative, Marlene." Kowalski ran in and picked up the flower quickly, placing it in a glass vase that he set on the table. He quickly made his way back to Marlene and resumed whispering. "Lola's his wife"

"How come I've never seen her before?"

"She's been..." Kowalski briefly paused for a moment as he contemplated how much info he should divulge to someone not in Skipper's team. He decided to go with as little as possible. "Away."

Marlene, who seemed to be slowly accepting all of this strange info about Skipper, scratched her head slightly in thought. "Where?"

"That's classified, top secret penguin information, Marlene."

Rico walked towards the table, wearing a waiter's uniform...and an executioner's mask. He lifted it up for a moment and hacked up the ax he had sharpened earlier. Rico pulled out a watermelon and tossed it into the air, then chopped it in half with the ax. One piece fell onto Skipper's plate and the other onto Lola's.

"Well..." Marlene crossed her arms and finally removed the confused expression from her face. "Okay then." She watched as Skipper happily ate with his doll wife at the table, accepting the fact that it was never for her at all perfectly.

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**And there you go! Hope you enjoyed it!**


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